Why would anyone prefer childish simplicity to a
complex drawing that grapples with form, musculature, accumulated fat,
the tension of the skin and the bones and joints beneath?

In his current exhibition, Body Language, [Charles] Saatchi again explores aspects
of figurative art but with neither the aesthetic nor the visceral
challenge of Sensation, and as the artists are not English we can draw
no useful conclusions from it, as we did with the YBAs. It is the
result, I fear, of perhaps too random a trawl in the United States and
casual acquaintance in Japan, Budapest and Yekaterinburg. The only
familiar artist is Chantal Joffe, an American working in London....

The spaces of the Saatchi Gallery are splendid, lofty, vast, the
lighting brilliant, and of this the immediate consequence is that the
paintings it houses are given false authority, and we stand before them
in veneration as though before an altarpiece. But they are not
spiritually thaumaturgical and they deserve no such response. We should
discern at once that Makiko Kudo’s verdant landscapes have only the
shallow charm of murals that the cheap restaurants of my youth employed
to camouflage their shabbiness, that likening Helen Verhoeven’s
supposedly mysterious gatherings to Picasso’s Guernica is as arrogant as
it is absurd, and that Henry Taylor’s kinship with Martin Maloney, of
whom, Californian born, bred and working, he can hardly be aware, is
merely another example of the internationalism of bad painting. Why must
the critic waste his time struggling to discern purpose in such feeble
rubbish?....

The Wallace Collection exhibits 37 academies on loan from the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts in Paris, where there is a cache of more than 600 by 220
artists between 1664 and 1793. They are probably the best but I have
seen many that are as good or better, drawn over a far longer period as
well as by other nationalities — even at the Slade, Royal Academy and
South Kensington (the precursor of the Royal College) Schools they were
part of the discipline well into the 20th century. They are not rare,
nor are they expensive; instead, they are a genre of old master drawing
that even the most modest collector may collect, and as observations of
body language I would rather have one fine academy than all the slipshod
bodies now on view in the Saatchi Gallery. Sorry, Charles.…

"Women Look at Women"

TOMPKINSVILLE — "Women Look at Women," the late fall show at the Staten
Island LGBT Community Center, has a complicated subtext about female
artists looking at women and producing different results, unavailable to
other genders.

It's easy to just assume there will be differences even if they're
hard to see, no? What isn't debatable is that femaleness has obsessed
artists for thousands of years, ever since that handy Neanderthal
chipped a rock into a recognizably feminine form. (And who's to say, by
the way, that this Neanderthal wasn't female...)...[more]

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

A recent incident of art censorship in Berlin has sparked a debate
about the difference between art and pornography, as well as the
importance of artistic freedom versus religious sensitivity.

According to the American Foreign Press [AFP], an
adult education center removed a series of six nude paintings in an
attempt to acknowledge and respect Muslim religious beliefs.

The school's deputy head feared the works may shock Muslim students
and prevent them from attending class. The school is located nearby a
newly established refugee center, which draws immigrants and
asylum-seekers to the once mostly German-born region.

by Berlin artist Susanne Schueffel

The decision was immediately critiqued by some as an unnecessary
precaution and an inhibitor to artistic freedom. District council member
Juliane Witt aptly expressed how the decision could not only negatively
affect the artists and German students, but the Muslim students as
well. "If you do something to protect someone, then you are defining them," she told the AFP, "and that can be stigmatizing." [more]

Friday, November 15, 2013

When we think about the French Academy, if we think about it at
all, we tend to think of it as the great limiter of art, the oppressive
institution that tried to stifle innovation and hold the fine arts in
historical limbo for centuries.

Charles Gleyre’s “Study For ‘The Departure of the
Apostles’ ” is one of
the works featured in the exhibit
“The Academy Exposed: French Figure
Studies” through
Dec. 22 at the University of Notre Dame’s SniteMuseum
of Art.

That role, historically accurate or not, is essential for the
standard narrative of Modern art history; how would we define the
Realists and the Impressionists if not by the traditions they were
acting against? We think less often about the Academy as a basic
educator, a place where young artists learned the fundamentals of their
craft. A small show currently up at the Snite Museum of Art helps us to
see the French Academy in that simpler role.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Sensual Geometry: The Development of the Male Nude in Ancient Greek Art

By Ann Aptaker

This article is adapted from Ms. Aptaker’s lectures in Art History at the New York Institute of Technology

Let’s face it, step into a museum gallery of ancient Greek statuary and painted vases and you could get the impression that for about five hundred years from around 600 BCE (this article will use the newer designation of BCE, Before the Common Era) the male population of Greece lived life undressed.1 There are athletes in the nude; soldiers in the nude; handsome young men who were famous for merely being handsome in the nude. By contrast, the Pharaohs, nobles and aristocratic men of ancient Egypt wouldn’t be caught dead in representations of themselves without a skirt or drape of some kind that indicated their rank or stature in society. Ditto for the men of Mesopotamia. Later Romans, though they mimicked the nude statuary of Greece, just as often commissioned statues of themselves in warriors’ armor or aristocratic drapery to call attention to their military heroism or political importance.

So why was the attitude of the ancient Greeks so different from other ancient cultures regarding nudity? Blame it on math.

If that answer seems facile, consider this: the great fifth century BCE sculptor Polykleitos wrote a treatise called The Canon, or The Canon of Proportion, which dictated specific mathematical proportions and relationships for all parts of the human body. Polykleitos based his formulae on work attributed to the sixth century BCE mathematician Pythagoras, whose noted theorem is still in use today.

But Polykleitos’ Canon, brilliant as it was and is, simply codified a way of thinking, a way of expressing beauty, which had been evolving in Greece for centuries. We can actually see the beginning of that way of thinking, and we can marvel that it appeared at a time when chaos and violence left Greek civilization hanging by a thread.

The fall of the Mycenaean civilization on mainland Greece, beginning around 1200 BCE, ushered in The Greek Dark Age. Invaders from the north and from Ionia in the east overran the once splendid Bronze Age heroic civilization and replaced it with the violence of constant warfare and the displacement of whole populations of sacked towns and villages. This miserable situation lasted over two hundred years, but around 1000 BCE things slowly started to settle down. Daily life was still bleak and dangerous, violence continued, but here and there a revitalizing culture started to take root, mainly through items of daily necessity; after all, even if your community no longer needs palaces, your little hut still need cups and jars and bowls. It is in early Greek pottery that we see the beginnings of a way of thinking that eventually became the ancient world’s most sophisticated expression of the beauty of the human figure, particularly the male nude.

This amphora (Fig.1) dates from about 950 BCE. The style, called Proto-geometric, is simple and strictly utilitarian: lines and shapes moving around the surface of the pot. The Proto-geometric period, roughly the tenth century BCE, sets the foundation for everything to come in Greek art.2 In this pot and others of the period, we see the beginnings of the Greek fascination with rational mathematics, especially geometry. It all started with everyday utensils decorated with simple lines.

Though other ancient cultures also decorated their pottery with similar lines and shapes, what’s new here, and what’s uniquely Greek, is a consciously harmonious relationship between the shape of the vase and the surface decoration. Each facet of the decoration occupies a specific part of the structure and is meant to delineate the volumes, which are themselves in harmonious proportion to one another:

-the solid black of the tall neck with an encircling checkered pattern positioned like a necklace;

-the solid bands on the shoulder;

-the undulating wave around the belly; and the swelling shape of the belly contained by another solid band below;

-the whole thing resting comfortably and securely on the solid band of the foot.

Note that I’ve used the names of human body parts for the parts of the vase: neck, shoulder, belly, foot. The Greeks believed that the organic structure of pottery is analogous to the organic, balanced structure of human form and that both could be explained by the principles of geometry.

Though mathematics and geometry are rational, for the Greeks, even as early as the Proto-geometric period, mathematics and geometry are not cold. The Greeks gave a philosophical warmth to mathematics, marrying the principles of rationality to the spirit of philosophy, which they eventually developed into the Classical idea of Humanism.

During the centuries prior to the Athenian development of democracy in 508 BCE, the city-states of Greece, like all other ancient civilizations, were ruled by Kings. The Egyptian Pharaoh, for example, was considered a living god on earth. But the Greek relationship with even their most powerful or despotic leaders was quite different from that of other kingdoms. The Greek kings regarded themselves human beings, mere mortals, not gods on earth. If the Greek kings had a divine connection to any of their gods it was because their human mother or father mated with a god or goddess and the resulting child was at best a half-god, called a demi-god, and only because of the human process of sexual relations and childbearing (the gods, among themselves, could reproduce parthenogenically). This great difference in outlook, that human beings, not the gods, were, as the Greek philosopher Protagoras wrote, “the measure of all things” on earth, is what enabled the Greeks to unite the rationality of mathematics to the warmth of humanist philosophy and, by extension, to an appreciation of the human body as an ideal evocation of that unity.

By the eighth century BCE, a full blown Geometric style was ascendant, as we see in this monumental krater from the Dipylon cemetery in Athens (Fig 2A). This enormous pot, standing nearly three and a half feet tall, was not for household use but served as a grave marker, much as a headstone is used today. The painted scenes represent the funeral service and mourning (upper register of figures) and funeral procession or military parade (lower register of figures) honoring the deceased gentleman we see lying atop the funeral bier (Fig. 2B, center). The rational properties of geometry informed the physical proportions of the vase (which are in perfect balance here) and to rendering the figures, which are expressed in a purely geometric language: ovals for heads; triangles for the upper body; lozenge shapes for hips and legs; rectangles or lines for arms. The upraised arms of the female mourners (who are tearing out their hair in grief) on either side of the funeral bier bend at pure right angles to form rectangles and near-squares.

Though this use of everyday shapes to render human (and animal) form may seem simplistic, a century or so of drawing in this manner gave Greek artists a deep understanding of the properties of shape and the proportional relationships between parts of the human body. This confidence, together with the Greek belief that human beings and human experience are the central issues of daily existence, that the “here and now” is more immediately relevant than eternity, which was the province of the immortal gods in any event and about which human beings had little or no say, gave Greek artists the skills and state of mind to make the next leap in their remarkable development of the nude figure.

While it’s fair to say that the development of Greek art and its emphasis on the human and not the godly was unique in the ancient world, it must also be acknowledged that Greek artists did not develop in isolation. Though this kouros (Fig. 3), meaning a statue of a nude male youth, exhibits those values we can identify as uniquely Greek, it also exhibits the influence of Egypt, the dominant power and culture through much of ancient history. Like Egyptian statuary,3 this kouros stands in a rigid frontal pose, his hands clenched at his sides and with one leg forward.

But the similarity ends there. Unlike Egyptian figures, which were meant to express an unchanging eternal, this kouros makes visible the Greek philosophy of male beauty, harmonious of face and body, and above all active and athletic.

To begin with, the young man is nude, whereas Egyptian figures were clothed. Moreover, Egyptian standing figures were anchored to a supporting block of stone,4 but this kouros is free standing. This achievement is not only technical, it represents a philosophical expression as well.

Dealing first with the technical aspect, the balance necessary to achieve a free standing figure of stone was a result of the Greeks’ deep understanding of geometry and its properties. From the lessons inherent in the tectonics of pottery to the painted geometric shapes which earlier expressed human form, by the sixth century BCE, the Archaic period, Greek sculptors were prepared to produce life-sized figures that stood as confidently on their feet as did living human beings.

Aesthetically, the kouros in Figure 3 is purely and utterly Greek. It is created through geometric forms: we still see the oval for the head; a triangular torso; and lozenges to form the legs. And philosophically it is Greek, expressing an idea of youthful maleness not as godly or heroic but as beautiful. This beauty is an expression of the ideal of harmony and balance, two attributes of rational mathematics which the Greeks believed contributed to the beauty of all things, including thought itself.

By the beginning of the Classical period, when Greek cultural confidence was at its height and no longer under the restraining influence of Egypt, Greek philosophy and art achieved a sophistication—and in art, the technical ability—which enabled philosophers and artists to address that most human of experiences, sensuality.

This early Classical figure called the Kritios Boy, dating to about 480 BCE, shares the one leg forward/frontal stance of his kouros predecessors, but here the geometry of the assembled shapes is more relaxed, more natural. Kritios Boy is believed to be the first sculpted human figure to employ contrapposto, meaning “shifting of weight.” The sculptor understood that human beings do not stand in rigid poses (except when at “attention” like soldiers); real human beings shift their weight and their body, positioning themselves along the vertical axis of the spine.

The contrapposto of the Kritios Boy is created by:

-the slight dip of his right hip as he balances his weight on his left (rear) leg;

-the bend of his forward leg at the knee, at ease;

-his head turned slightly to his right, unlike the stiff-necked Archaic kouroi.

This more natural posture, derived from the rational application of mathematics to achieve a balance of proportion, gives Kritios Boy not just a more natural appearance but a sensual one. What is being celebrated here isn’t heroism or power; what’s being celebrated is beauty of form and flesh; beauty as a philosophical ideal of life expressed through harmonious proportions, ease of posture, calmness of expression.

Only about thirty years after the unknown sculptor created the Kritios Boy, Polykleitos himself brought the spirit of Greek art to full magnificence with a series of sculptures that are masterpieces of his Canon of Proportion. In his Doryphoros (Spear Carrier) (Fig. 5), Polykleitos expressed harmony, balance and beauty through strict adherence to his mathematical formulae for the proportions and geometric masses of the nude figure.5 With mathematics as his absolute foundation, he was then able to create a contrapposto that is assertive, giving the figure the graceful S-curve that would become iconic in Greek sculpture. Polykleitos further enhanced the grace of the contrapposto with the harmony of “cross balance”: the bent arm is diagonally opposite the straight leg, while the straight arm is diagonal to the bent leg.

But the point of all this mathematics, of this rational approach to art, was not to express a cold beauty of and strength of mind were core values of Greek Humanist philosophy.

Polykleitos’ Canon would remain the standard for Greek sculpture through its Classical and Hellenistic periods and into the art of Rome. The grace and sensuality celebrated by the Classical nude influenced later masters such as Michelangelo, whose monumental David (1501-1504) is a sensual descendent6 of Polykleitos’ contrapposto and cross balance. And though figurative art is less dominant today, the human need for sensual expression never dies. Who would have thought it could be expressed in math?

_______________
1. Female figures in Greek art were more often clothed.

2. Technical advances in pottery manufacture developed during the Proto- geometric period are further described in Richter, Gisela M.A., A Handbook of Greek Art; A Survey of the Visual Arts of Ancient Greece, Seventh Edition, Phaidon Press Ltd., London, 1974; Boardman, John, Early Greek Vase Painting, Thames and Hudson, London, 1998; and others.

3. The period of Egyptian art and history referred to encompasses the Old Kingdom, ca. 2574-2134 BCE through the New Kingdom, ca. 1550-1070 BCE, which, with the exception of the Amarna period, ca. 1353-1335 BCE, essentially set the form which was maintained throughout most of Egyptian art until the Ptolemaic period, ca. 305 BCE-6 BCE. The Ptolemaic rulers, being Greek (after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great), brought Greek influence into late Egyptian art. The defeat of Egypt by the Romans in 6 BCE, further Classicized Egyptian art.

4. Egyptian figures sculpted of wood or smaller than life-size figures in stone were often free-standing. The distribution and balance of weight of life-size and monumental stone figures in Egypt, however, usually necessitated an anchoring block.

5. This figure is a later copy, in marble, made in Rome for the Palestra athletic stadium in Pompeii. The original Greek statue was created cast in bronze. This situation is true of a considerable number of Greek statues, many of them originally bronze, since lost to time. Nevertheless, as far as we know, the ancient Roman sculptors were entirely faithful in their reproductions of the original Greek. Without these Roman copies, we would not know as much about the remarkable development of Greek sculpture. We are especially certain of the Romans’ accuracy of Polykleitos’ works because Roman sculptors strictly followed Polykleitos’ instructions, as written in his Canon.

6. Though the David is clearly influenced by Classical sculpture, and in particular by Polykleitos, Michelangelo had no taste for the mathematical approach to human form. His David is reflective of his belief that organic form already exists within a block of stone and it is the sculptor’s art to bring it out. The proportions of the David, therefore, are not mathematically accurate, though the visual effect is certainly natural to the eye.

Ann Aptaker has been an arts professional for over twenty years as curator, exhibition designer and art writer in museums and galleries on the east and west coasts of the United States. In addition to her present work as an independent curator and art writer in New York, Ann is an adjunct professor of Art History at New York Institute of Technology.Ann holds degrees from Hollins College (now Hollins University), where she graduated Cum Laude and with Departmental Honors in Art History, and and MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, where she earned fellowships for both years of study.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Gregory Wolfe: Art in a Fallen World <---Link to the WSJ article)This is an article in the Wall Street Journal® about the art of the late Thomas Kincaid. There is a Kincaid painting with the article. The article promotes the idea that there can be no pleasure without pain, no joy without sorrow, no celebration without tragedy. There is a Kincaid painting with the article that is not reproduced here. It is worth looking at to set the context of the opinion below.

I am profoundly opposed to Wolfe's view. If you are opposed to my opposition, I advise you to stop reading now, because you are only going to get upset. Don't say I didn't warn you!

It is easy to be enmeshed in the idea that pain is required to appreciate pleasure in our “relativistic” world. Looking at Kincaid’s painting “The Cross,” we should steel ourselves to remember that the vision is just after the most celebrated death by torture in history. Look at the lush sky the beautiful blue-green hills, the promise of day. Most Christians can really respond to it, then he’s got them – they’ve forgotten that their Savior died over night on that very cross. The painting is well-designed for guilt. Christians respond to it and then they are supposed to feel guilty for taking pleasure in the beauty of the world after the Savior’s death.

There is only the world, reality and our own lives. This article and sentiment is a search for redemption by those who feel deeply that they have gone wrong somewhere, but they have hope to find redemption and forgiveness.

Where they have gone wrong is in denying the law of non-contradiction. They want life and they want everlasting life (a contradiction), they want love (a choosing) and universal love (a contradiction). They want happiness without work (a contradiction unless you can get victims to sacrifice for your happiness). And they want forgiveness without changing their ways.

The appeal of the Passion is that it tells people that they, in their denial of the law of non-contradiction, are not alone, and should therefore feel the comfort of community. Everyone is in the same boat it tells them, so just stop whining and learn to enjoy your misery. Didn’t Ellsworth Toohey tell Catherine Halsey much the same thing?1

Instead of teaching them where they have gone wrong, that the universe is non-contradictory, that A is A, Christianity perpetuates the myth of mysticism and the consequence of mysticism, self-doubt. Once a person doubts their ability to deal with reality because they believe that things can be and not be in the same respect at the same time, then they are ripe for any type of altruistic ideology, be it religious or secular.

The moral crises the world faces is framed in terms of altruism vs Objectivism, but the support of the morality of altruism comes from metaphysics, and the mistaken belief that Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction “doesn’t have to be true (at least not in all cases).”

The one thing that is not allowed by altruism is a totally consistent universe, and its proper result, the guiltless man – John Galt2. He is Ayn Rand’s shining example of throwing out the fake alternative between a betrayed self as a victim and an evil doer. This is what we must remember and follow. Note the last paragraph of the article:

“But if faith teaches us anything, it should be that our nostalgia is for an ideal we can only find after accepting, and passing through the brokenness of a fallen world. Any other approach, in art or life, is a form of denial. [Emphasis added].

The Passion is the proper display of their formless, nameless, malevolent guilt. It matches their universe. While we can appreciate the technical skill, I believe that this Christian idea and all of its artistic manifestations are depraved and should be condemned without exception.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Hot Shoulder — In 2009, New York artist Cindy Sibilsky uploaded one of the earliest portraits on Barebrush, Edie Sedgewick: Pop Goes the American Dream. It has been showing on the Barebrush website with little fanfare for over two years. Victim of the recession, Barebrush was severely impacted. Plans to launch new calendars for six genres: portraits, clothed people, landscapes, animals, still life and abstracts took a back-seat to merely hanging on for dear life. Art for these genres slowly trickled in from artists, some also struggling. Finally, having enough art to launch a single calendar series with all the new genres together, Barebrush founder and CEO Ilene Skeen selected the art for the first non-nude calendar, Best-of-the-Rest. Ms. Skeen notes,

Barebrush Artists have waited long enough. I’ve waited long enough. It’s time to take control. Nothing could be better from Barebrush and Barebrush artists than a hot shoulder and defiant attitude toward the gloom and doom of the country. It’s time for a positive springboard to the future, in which nude and non-nude artworks are easy for artists to show and viewers to enjoy. Soon these works (both originals and prints) will be available for sale directly from the Barebrush website.

Portraits and clothed people predominate in this calendar. Long-time Barebrush Featured Artist, Jean Marcellino of New York shows off her solid technique and composition with a brutally rigorous oil painting, Reclining Robert. Jacqui Morgan, also a Barebrush Featured Artist from New York presents two accomplished watercolors: Julie & Dirty Having Fun and Eternal vs Fleeting. Still another New York artist, Jon Rettich, shows a delightful drawing, Tank Happy and a ringing endorsement of the New York art-making locale, with Spring Studio which he describes as “Best studio ever.” Participating from afar are Robert Nizamov from Moscow, Russia with two landscapes, Boats and City, Featured Artist Roger Cummiskey from Malaga, Spain (and sometimes Ireland) with Joyce the Pluralist, Featured Artist Chuck Miller of Corsicana, TX with an oil of his wife sleeping, entitled Sunday Afternoon and Featured Artist Jacqueline Saunders from Burke, VA with a series of watercolor heads called Band of Brothers.

Each of the artists selected for the calendar receives two (2) complimentary listings for each artwork included in this calendar. Viewers can also vote for “The People's Choice,” a poll which includes all of the art in the calendar. The top three artworks in The People's Choice win one (1) complementary listing for their artists. Winners announced December 1st.

The Barebrush Provenance for each artwork is viewable by clicking on the calendar thumbnail (above) or on the caption under the artwork from each artist’s Barebrush Gallery page. The Barebrush program of retiring artworks which have been selected for three calendars is designed to encourage all artists to show their best new work and keep their online galleries fresh and interesting.

The Barebrush Provenance for each artwork is viewable by clicking on the calendar thumbnail (above) or on the caption under the artwork from each artist’s Barebrush Gallery page. The Barebrush program of retiring artworks which have been selected for three calendars is designed to encourage all artists to show their best new work and keep their online galleries fresh and interesting.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Lookout World! — Launching the first PhotoArt N*des calendar is Naked Sky Captain by Barebrush Featured Artist, Angelique Moselle Price of Tennessee. Price’s piece has attitude, style and composition, which says it all. Price is an accomplished painter as well and her work can be found in many of the original N*des-of-the-Month calendar series. Other Barebrush Featured Artists participating in the launch of PhotoArt N*des include: Guenter Knop, William Thierfelder, Dan McCormack and Janet E. Gorman from the New York area. Kentucky photographers Joseph Mays and T.F. McDonald are also Featured. The record holder for participation is Tony Lee of Panama, a consistent prize winner since his first calendar entry in May of 2007. As veteran viewers of Barebrush know, Featured Artist status is invitational only. These photographers have shown interest, enthusiasm and support for the Barebrush concept. Most have appeared in many of the calendars in the original series.

Each of these artists has a distinctive style and oeuvre. Knop specializes in highly polished art-deco beauties, deliciously posed. Tony Lee is known for his emotional male nudes in at peace or war with the world around them. Dan McCormack has resurrected pin-hole photography to a high art with his scenes women at home and literally in the field. Joseph Mays’ work is instantly recognizable for his series called Alien Twilight, carefully composed nudes, sometimes with body paint, glowing out of the darkness. William Thierfelder often composes to a theme with variations, sometimes adding much hand work (where the art would be appropriate for the original calendar), and other times leaving the photograph pristine.

Participating from further away are Corrie Ancone of Sydney Australia and Gabriel Sanchez of Mexico. Making his Barebrush calendar debut is George McClintock from Purchase, NY.After five years of showing photography with our original N*des-of-the-Month calendars, it was time for photography to come into its own. Ilene Skeen, Barebrush founder and CEO, selected the art. Ms. Skeen states,

I am proud at last to showcase the photography nudes at Barebrush in their own calendar series proving that even in the photographic medium, art of the nude can be tasteful and delightful (or arresting and provocative), while having nothing to do with prurience and pornography.

Each of the artists selected for the calendar receives two (2) complimentary listings for each artwork included in this calendar. Viewers can also vote for “My Favorite PhotoArt N*de,” a poll which includes all of the art in the calendar. The top three artworks in My Favorite PhotoArt N*de win one (1) complementary listing for their artists. Winners announced December 1st.

The Barebrush Provenance for each artwork is viewable by clicking on the calendar thumbnail (above) or on the caption under the artwork from each artist’s Barebrush Gallery page. The Barebrush program of retiring artworks which have been selected for three calendars is designed to encourage all artists to show their best new work and keep their online galleries fresh and interesting.

After more than five years of carefully watching Barebrush guest curators as they struggled to select the art, I said to myself, ‘It’s my turn.’

It was a lot harder than I thought. So much good art and even some great art. I have to admit, I gravitated toward well-designed art from artists who diligently maintain their gallery on Barebrush. I want to show site viewers wonderful art from a wide variety of artists. I hoped to make a calendar filled with life and fun. I think November 2011 N*des-of-the Month calendar has both.

The calender launches with an oil, Study of Man #3 by David Schulz of Middletown, CT. Ms. Lamarche selected this painting as Curators’ Choice nominee, and Ms. Skeen was happy to place it on November 1, noting “The attitude is arresting, the composition is satisfying and the skill is evident. What could be more important?”

Ms. Lamarche also nominated Repose, an oil by Chuck Miller of Corsicana, TX. This large work could be a lesson for all artists. With a minimum of detail, the figure is solid and the ground is solid as it appears to move away in space: a masterful performance. Artist Tools #2 by Donelli J. DiMaria, located in New Mexico, is also an oil. DiMaria gives us a nude in the guise of a still life, filled with humor, color, and showing off his love for art.

Two nominees are graphite. Ms. Lamarche chose On The Bed by Eddie Torres of New York, NY whose diagonal composition is intriguing in its simplicity and expression. She also chose Leaning Nude by Hannah Davis of Brooklyn NY, also diagonal, emphasizing the femininity of the model’s lines and curves.Two artists are making their calendar debut at Barebrush: Darryl King from Pensacola, FL and Malcolm McCoull from Perth, Australia.

One artwork is retiring: Entwined by John Luce Lockett of Northampton, England. Other artworks in this calendar of special note are: Markos by Brian Crede for its design; the unusual ceramic, One Long Lazy Afternoon by Marsha Karagheusian; Daniel Maidman’s conceit, Self Portrait as Hockney. In addition, the shocking attitude of Embrace by Terry Hinkle is beautifully executed, as is the fanciful exuberance of Defiant Angel by Rebecca Venn, and finally, ending the month with another masterful representation of space, N*de St*dy 2011 WB1 by C. Charles Wang.

Each of the artists selected for the calendar receives two (2) complimentary listings. Five artists, indicated by asterisks (*), are nominated for the Curators Choice Awards. Curators’ Choice nominees receive 8 additional complimentary listings. The top three artists receive additional prizes.

Viewers can also vote for “My Favorite N*de,” a poll which includes all of the art in the calendar. The top three artworks in My Favorite N*de win one (1) complementary listing for their artists. Winners announced December 1st.

The Barebrush Provenance for each artwork is viewable by clicking on the calendar thumbnail (above) or on the caption under the artwork from each artist’s Barebrush Gallery page. The Barebrush program of retiring artworks which have been selected for three calendars is designed to encourage all artists to show their best new work and keep their online galleries fresh and interesting.
Click here for more about ACA Galleries

Thank you all for your interest and participation in barebrush.com, dedicated to the art of the nude.

Monday, June 27, 2011

As many readers of this blog know, I am an artist, entrepreneur and anthropologist.

I began Barebrush as a sort of experiment to see if I could discern any consistent threads in the way diverse curators think about and select art. With the myriad of styles and approaches current in today's art world, I constructed an anthropological model to see for myself if any dominant approaches or preferences emerged.

I am pleased to report that they have. No matter whether the work is super-realist or runs the gamut from impressionist to abstract, professional art curators, curators who know the technical difficulties of many media, look for three major accomplishments from the artworks they review:

Skill: Skill is evidence that the artist exercised care and judgment appropriate to the artwork. Non-artists tend to think of skill primarily in terms of rendering, but curators are aware of the related skills required to pick a subject point-of-view of interest to the art viewer. There is also significant skill required to place the subject in space. In two-dimensional art this is called “placement on the page” even if it is a painting or a mural. In three-dimensional art, the challenge is placement in space in such a way as to compel viewers to want to see the work from all sides and to reward them for doing so. My observation has been that even in sketchy, gesture drawings and paintings, and especially in more rendered work, curators look for evidence of thought and consideration accompanied by technical mastery and a unified presentation. Unified presentation could also be considered mastery of style, but since mastery of style involves mastery as such, for purpose of clarity, style can be considered an aspect of skill.

Emotion: Curators universally love looking at art. The ability of a visual artist to evoke emotion is highly prized. Just like the rest of us, they love to be surprised, delighted, touched by tenderness, impressed by dignity. And it seemed to me that as art professionals, they would rather be goaded into anger than to feel nothing about an artwork.

Significance: The artwork necessarily has significance to the artist, as is self-evident by the fact of its very existence. Curators seem to look for artworks which “speak” to them about the things they care about. This is the reason why we ask each curator to submit a personal statement in order to help the artist understand at least something of what the curator is about.

As year number five draws to a close, the process continues. Barebrush is growing. We are working on the next big upgrade which will introduce direct selling by the artists on the Barebrush website. My thanks to all the curators and the artists who together have made Barebrush the website to find excellence in contemporary art.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Composition in art refers to the visual organization of the work. In The Art of Color and Design, Maitland Graves writes, "The aim of composition is to create an interesting unit. Interest is the result of variety. Unity is created by dominance."1

In 2005, I was studying the anthropology of art and I wanted to understand composition. I had two reasons for wanting to understand composition. First of all, my focus in anthropology was the 200 years between 1800 and 2000 when profound changes had taken place in Western Art. During that period, painting went from striving to depict history and beauty to being contempuous of subject matter entirely. Everything that could be dispensed with was jettisoned—important subjects, meticulous finish, beauty, to name just a few of the early casualties. Cutting-edge, “modern” art became, in turn, a statement of tonality, impression, expression, line, shape, color, and finally nothing at all. I noticed that over time, although many people resisted each new change, eventually people came around, so that today probably the most popular styles in the US are some forms of impressionism or expressionism.

So my first reason related to my budding theory that over the 200 years, until art reached the dead end of pure nihilism, the great artists were still making great compositions and great compositions matter to people as much or more than the actual subject matter, finish and beauty. I wondered if there were a basis in biology for what humans consider great composition. How do we recognize them? Why do they resonate with us?

My second reason for wanting to understand composition was simply to be a better artist.

When art historians talk about composition, they seem mostly to talk about the objects and “things” represented in paintings. They might also talk about the relationship of the people and objects in the painting to each other. Sometimes they sketch vague triangular shapes, angular v or w shapes, loopy m shapes or arrows indicating the direction of eye movement.

Books for painters are no better. They are filled with do’s and don’ts, and general exhortations, but not with any clear principles or procedures that work to serve as a guide for either students or art historians. Even design books, which talk about harmony, balance, diversity and areas of interest, seemed to leave the student on his own to find what is “pleasing” as a composition, or they recommended using the golden ratio.

Golden Rectangle

The golden ratio is the most famous constructive method for making the overall length to width of the artwork according to “pleasing” proportions. It can also be used to determine the size of subsidiary elements. The most famous building said to be constructed along the lines of the golden ratio is the Parthenon of Greece. Thus, this ratio has fascinated artists and mathematicians since Greece's Golden Age, about 2400 years ago. It is associated with the Fibbonacci series. The rectangle at right is an example of construction using the golden ratio.

Construction of a golden rectangle:
1. Construct a unit square (red).
2. Draw a line from the midpoint of one side to an opposite corner.(arrow)
3. Use that line as the radius to draw an arc that defines the long dimension of the rectangle

The Wikipedia discussion of the golden rectangle notes the on-going debates about which great painters used or did not use the golden ratio in which of their works.

Generally, the golden rectangle means nothing to the viewing public. For art viewers, viewing great art, the reaction is immediate. If the painting’s overall dimensions do or do not conform to the golden ratio, what does that tell us? Only that the overall dimensions should be pleasing, if we even bother to determine whether the overall dimensions are in a golden rectangle.

For artists, the problem with the golden rectangle is that the reality of what the artist needs to accomplish often does not conform to the golden ratio in terms of shape and size of the art. If the picture space is square, almost square, very tall, very wide, or just not in conformance with the golden rectangle, the question becomes, what should the artist do to make the composition designed within the given space as dynamically interesting and pleasing as possible?

The bottom line is that whether or not the outside dimensions of an artwork conform to the golden rectangle, the contents, meaning the forms and shapes, may still be arranged poorly. The golden rectangle does not help us to understand the arrangement of the art within the two dimensional space – unless, as in the rare case, the artist painted a compositional spiral like Velasquez’ Las Minenas.

So I eventually discarded the idea that even great artists routinely used the golden ratio for their work. The evidence does not support that conclusion. I also discarded the idea that artists would construct sections of a painting to conform to the golden rectangle, even if the work did not follow the golden ratio overall. I discarded it because artists are constantly and consistently concerned about the unity of their work, because great painting has an immediate emotional impact as a single whole, not as a sum of parts. Basically, a method construction that teaches the artist to address parts of a painting while saying nothing coherent about the entire painting would be pointless.

So it seemed to me that I had reached a dead end. There seemed to be no theories on visual harmony which presented specifics on how humans process the information within a two dimensional space of a picture as a unified whole. Thus I found no principles of composition of which I could take advantage, either as an anthropologist or artist. Finally I had nothing left but my two eyes and a blank piece of paper, and that’s when I had a breakthough and invented a new type of visual grid for composing and judging two-dimensional art.

Because most of us have two eyes and we want to take in as much of the image as we can in a single glance, I reasoned that there could be a natural visual flow to looking at a painting that is informed by these facts. I marked the edges of my paper into thirds both along the length and the width so that each side had two marks. If I connected the marks horizontally and vertically, I would have had a tic tac toe grid. However, since my goal was to mimic how the eye might move around the picture plane, I knew that a static, horizonal-by-vertical grid would impede eye motion rather than promote it, so I drew the grid on the diagonal.

The resulting grid has exactly 13 shapes: 8 triangles, 5 quadrilaterals (four-sided figures), never more, never less. Four of the triangles are right triangles, and 4 are isosceles. The mathematical relationship of each shape to the whole is constant with the smallest triangles being 1/36th of the whole. If we were to draw diagonals from the corners of the rectangle, we would wind up with 12 triangles and 12 quadrilaterals, each quadrilateral being twice the size of each triangle. It would be a nice pattern, but bascially static: we would lose the visual dynamics of the grid when it has the 13 areas, four different shapes of various sizes, including the large center shape which is one-third of the entire area.

If you have a computer drawing program, you can draw a square as a multiple of 3 units. Then you can easily place the lines and group them. After they are grouped, you can change the size of your box and the lines will automatically adjust. My theory is that this grid mirrors is the way the viewer's eyes efficiently scan the image and that art which conforms to this grid is more visually satisfying to the viewer.﻿﻿﻿

The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein

﻿The very first painting I analyzed with the diagonal grid was The Ambassadors by Holbein. Here is the painting to the left. If you have a drawing program you can draw a grid and place it over the painting and do your own analysis all electronically. Or you can print out the image and draw the grid by hand.

In the next post, I will show how the grid helped me to understand both the visual dynamics of this composition, the relationship of the men to each other and to their instruments, and the strange, stretched skull in the lower center.

I will also show more examples of work which seems to "obey" the grid and work which does not.

The key concept to remenber is that the rectangle or square is always divided by thirds along each side so that the resulting grid has 13 shapes.

When dealing with constructing a composition, I will show how the diagonal grid 13 (DG13) helps the artist actually create the unity of composition to which all the design books would have artists aspire. DG13 will not automatically make an artist a better artist -- it's a tool, like any other. I don't claim to have all the answers, just an interesting way of dealing with the question. I'm going to assume that the grid can be used or misused. My purpose is to introduce it, turn it loose, and see what people make of it.

Monday, May 16, 2011

﻿﻿Review of Naked: The Nude in America by Bram Dijkstra
﻿﻿As a coffee table book, Bram Dijsktra’s Naked: The Nude in America has a lot going for it. It is big, it is beautiful, it is a conversation starter. Even better, it is controversial, with plenty of gorgeous images you’ve never seen, some you’ve seen and half forgotten, others so shocking you’d be happy to forget, (except when you want to see them again). Best of all, Naked is eminently readable.

Bram Dijkstra is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Cultural History at University of California, San Diego. As a cultural historian, his focus is the cultural importance of the art, the context in which it appeared and the narrative it furthered. He starts with the contradictory effects of misguided American puritanism – that the campaign to make nudity and sexuality forbidden thereby made them irresistible.

The Forge of VulcanJohn Singleton Copley

Dijkstra’s story is of male domination, female acquiescence and surrender. When the fight appears won, the artists (both male and female), strike out for more forbidden territory and the nudes get younger and younger (both male and female). Symbolic references abound, such as the oval mirror representing female sexuality. Later, widely-accepted pseudo-scientific theories misapplied to evolution both thrill and warn the male population of the base nature of the female – as a siren intent on enticing men to serve her sexual destiny. In poetic terms, this is the age of vagina dentata.

Soon after, the larger European art story, the deconstruction of art into modernism, invades the US and all figurative art becomes “vulgarity.” This notion functions as received wisdom from American art critic, Clement Greenberg, “then the ruling satrap of abstraction.”1 “Serious” art deconstructs the body into cubism, expressionism, surrealism and abstraction. But instead of surrendering representation entirely, in the US the story takes an unexpected twist. Illustration, in the guise of cartoons, comic books, and pulp fiction cover art makes a fetish of body parts, especially breasts, vaginae and penises (although penises are not on covers). Later, abstraction waning after its heyday, the battle lines blur and cross again, with serious art using sexually explicit body parts expertly represented, and illustration devolving into ever more crude content and styles. In the end, Dijkstra seeks rapprochement, “to the simple, unadorned realities of everyday life....to the naked truth of life itself.”2

Ganymede (Lyric Poetry Series)Henry Oliver Walker

It’s a compelling story, but it is after all, a story told by a man, and though true enough, perhaps not the whole truth. Being a woman, an artist and an anthropologist means that I bring a different gender, visual and cultural perspective to any reading of art purporting to be universal. That’s why Naked is so much fun. There is so much to learn, so much to like and much with which to take issue in this huge beauty of a book. For example, in chapter one, Dijkstra’s explanation for The Forge of Vulcan (1754) by John Singleton Copley, is an opening tour de force, unmasking, so to speak, the “playfully obscene visual iconography”3 which young American artists were acquiring from the French and Italian rococo.

[The “Forge of Vulcan” is perhaps] the first painting by an American-born artist to feature a female nude with an explicitly erotic theme[.] Copley chose to emphasize what has remained an indelible association in American culture to this day: the suggestion that sex and violence are two sides of the same coin.4

Cover for Cupid's Capers
Enoch Boles

I readily admit it: I never would have guessed either the hidden message of the piece or its place in history. Thereafter follows a most delightful collection of naked American beauties produced in the new republic. Art from this period is polished, luscious, playful, contemplative, sometimes simple, sometimes complex with putti, flowers, forests, draperies and bedsheets.

In addition, Naked includes many real gems from the lesser known and less exhibited artists. One work I especially enjoyed seeing in the book is my favorite sculpture, Joy of the Waters (1917) by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth. I was a teenager when I saw this beautiful bronze in 1964 in the window of a garden ornament shop on 40th St. in New York City. It is a figure of a naked girl, with arms in the air and one leg raised, about to do a cartwheel. I saw it again in 1967 and I wrote a long poem about it. Frishmuth lived until 1980 and the sculpture was still being cast at least until 1972. I still wish I could have afforded to buy it on the spot, so seeing it in Naked was like a joyful homecoming.

Other works I especially enjoyed discovering (naming only a fraction) include Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos (1809-1814) by John Vanderlyn, Female Nude Perched on a Stool (1858) by Daniel Huntington, Ruffina (1875) by William Shirlaw, Autumn Gathering Leaves (1902) by John La Farge, and Betty Page, Crandon Park Beach, Miami (1954), by Bunny Yeager.

Kate Moss on a White Horse
Nan Goldin

One particularly striking work done in 1869-70 is a crayon, oil and graphite piece on canvas, Evening (Fall of Day) by William Rimmer. In this piece Rimmer represents an essentially de-sexed, but physically imposing mature male with wings even broader than the Nike of Samothrace. His body arcs full frontal into the sky with one toe touching the horizon. The halo of a full moon (symbol of the “soul-destructive” world of night and women) surrounds his head and shoulders as his right arm reaches skyward out of the halo trying to grasp the last moments of the day (the symbol of the life affirming world of man’s power). Nothing else but Dijkstra’s explanation could make Rimmer's piece comprehensible. That being said, the composition, draftsmanship, imagination and portrayal of dying desperation make this piece arresting in its own right. Without Dijkstra’s explanation, we might enjoy the work visually, but move on wondering what on earth would possess the artist to represent a sexless man in such agony. Thanks to Dijkstra's scholarship, we can appreciate it both for what it looks like and what it represents in the history of American nudes.

﻿ ﻿

Superman Fantasy
Arthur Tress

﻿﻿﻿In another piece also with a compositional halo effect, Dijkstra’s explanation is less convincing. Mother and Child (The Oval Mirror), ca. 1899, by Mary Stevenson Cassatt shows a naked three-year old boy with his mother who is wearing a dressing gown . He seems to be standing on her thigh, leaning on her body so that his cheek is next to hers, his left arm around her neck, her hand lovingly engulfing his. In contrast, his right hand has a child’s hold on her thumb. Behind their heads, a mirror in an mahogany frame focuses their love. Although at times the piece has been called The Florentine Madonna because of its similarity to typical Italian Madonna and Child works, Dijkstra connects the oval shape of the mirror to the vagina mythology. In his interpretation, Cassatt is representing the gender ideology of a childlike and innocent-in-spirit mother urging her son to greatness. To his credit, he admits that the interpretation is perhaps “tendentious.”5

﻿

Untitled (Art Lover)
Russell Patterson

﻿ Surprisingly, I found one real failure of understanding erotica – and it occurs late in the book, when Dijkstra is being most conciliatory, thinking along the lines that the war between the sexes is over, we survived it, let’s just be people together. In looking at Nan Goldin’s Kate Moss on a White Horse (2001), Dijkstra finds only suggestions of “comfort, trust and parallel beauty.”6 However, to me, being female, this is the most erotic piece in the entire book, instantly riveting. Any woman who has ridden bareback on a horse only has to see this image to know that bareback and naked astride a horse is another level of erotica entirely. All of the hidden messages of masculine strength and feminine dependency are represented in the woman’s dangling leg, dreamy expression and the horse’s head turning to acknowledge the presence of its rider and seemingly, her purpose.

The lapse is small and unimportant in the larger scheme of the book which grows out of the author’s youthful discovery of a stack of pulp magazines and comic books left behind by an American soldier in a Dutch second-hand bookstore after World War II. As he writes in a note introducing the bibliography of works cited, “The lust for forbidden knowledge is all the encouragement a twelve-year-old boy needs to keep him doggedly pursuing the motives for metal bras in science fiction illustrations, or the double-entendres of a Matt Baker ‘headlights’ comic....”7

Of Yin and Yang
Ynez Johnston

All in all, the book represents the male point of view very admirably, and frankly, the fact that I come at the subject from a different gender viewpoint only served to heighten my enjoyment and appreciation of this impressive assemblage of art and scholarship.

For a sampling of the art in Naked, you see a variety of the images here. Some of images mentioned in this review are not shown due to restrictions on the publisher. At least some are visible individually the internet.

Monday, April 25, 2011

In December of 2001, I visited the Louvre. The statue of Nike of Samothrace (known also as the Winged Victory) enthralled me. Over 10 feet tall, dating from about 190 BCE, she stands at the head of the sweeping Daru staircase. There was a brisk wind blowing up the stairs. The wind seemed to be responsible for pressing the folds of Nike’s garment against her body. Of course, this was nonsense since both her body and garment are marble. The wind is merely a device to heighten the experience for the viewer. For me, Nike was the highlight of the Louvre, if not all Paris. More than thirty years earlier, I had written a sonnet dedicated to the great Hellenistic statue and the spirit she represents.

My first glimpse of the statue as I ascended the stairs was all I had hoped for and more. Thrilling, inspiring, overwhelming, there was no end of words to apply. I circled the statue in wordless admiration. I just couldn’t get enough of every angle. I circled slowly again and again in complete thrall. How long was I there? I don’t know. Eventually, I had to tear myself away so I could see more of the Louvre and its other treasures, but later, before I left the immense museum, I returned to the head of the Daru staircase and made several more enchanted circuits.

I wasn’t the only visitor circling Nike that afternoon. Many of the people I saw were also walking around her, looking at the thrust of the leg, the ripples of the fabric, the set of the shoulders and the angle of the back and wings. When most people look at sculpture, especially the greatest sculpture, they automatically walk around the art to view the work from different angles so they can really appreciate and understand it. Viewing sculpture is acknowledged to take effort and time to achieve the full experience. With sculpture, you simply have to see it from all sides to really see it. The image included here might be the “best” angle, but you’ll never know that for yourself unless you walk around it.

That being said, below is the sonnet I wrote 44 years ago. I was very young, just married, and it was written after my first visit to the Cloisters, which overlook the Hudson, the opening venue of the poem. Apologies for the quaint language; it still seems to fit.